


Vice

by Las



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 20:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Las/pseuds/Las
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU in which Ruby survives the S4 finale. Post-5x02. She finds Sam again after he and Dean go their separate ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vice

**Author's Note:**

> For beenworkingonacocktail, who prompted "Ruby/what could have been".

Yeah, sure, Sam held a knife to Ruby's neck and said he doesn't ever want to see her again, said he doesn't want anything to do with her, but then his brother dumps him after that shitshow in Colorado and here you are. It isn't the first time they've been face to face since Lilith died, but it's the first time Sam hasn't tried to stab her. She sees him considering it, the way his eyes harden and his fingers twitch to a knife that's no longer there. The knife _she_ gave him, the bastard.

Double-cross happens. Ruby can't hold it against him.

He doesn't trust her. Ruby doesn't need his trust. It's just that for a time, it was her and him against the world, and something inside her remembers that, even though her loyalties would never entertain such sentimentality.

It's okay. Ruby has become adept at compartmentalizing.

But back to the present tense, back to her standing with her arms crossed as he gives her the stinkeye through the barely open door.

"What do you want?" Sam asks.

"I want to come in."

One mississippi two mississippi three mississippi four--

He closes the door. Ruby hears the chain lock slide, and then it opens again. She steps inside.

-

Meg forgives her.

If Ruby were still human, she would weep with relief, but she is not, so she does not. Instead, she stands straight-backed and memorizes how forgiveness looks on Meg's face in this body. There are some tics that follow her from host to host, and Ruby knows them all. (Ruby is more malleable. For all that she's the one possessing the body, the host's reflexes and instincts play her like a harp, and she succumbs to them more often than not. This is one of the reasons Lilith chose her. Ruby vanishes into a role. She knows when to let go.)

"We're sisters again," Meg says.

"We never stopped being sisters," Ruby replies, and Meg just raises her eyebrow.

Later, Ruby watches as Lucifer cradles Meg's face in his hands, and the look on her face is one of pure rapture. It reminds Ruby, with a deep and sudden ache, of Lilith. She used to touch Ruby that tenderly, with such pride. Aside from Sam, Lilith was the only one who had touched Ruby all year. Lucifer may be her god, but Lilith was her prophet, tangible and specific and warm to the touch.

Demons don't care for touch they cannot weaponize, but Ruby has acquired a taste for it. She figures everyone has their vices, in the end.

-

Like many of the other times Sam fucked her, he is angry and grieving, hollow inside. He holds Ruby tight against him, her back to his front, and it's like being engulfed, locked in a vise grip. She is drowning in him. She gasps for air. She gasps his name, and he slams into her harder, tectonic. _Yeah, like that_. He growls the first line of an exorcism, and Ruby's borrowed heart beats faster at this familiar routine. She cries out when she feels fire burn her from the inside, but at some point the pain transmutes into pleasure, or maybe the pleasure absorbs the pain as it always does. She's not really sure. 

It's not that Ruby misses this. It's not that she misses Sam. It's just that she remembers what it was like. She remembers - viscerally, down to her bones - the long year and the hunger it nursed in her. It was too long. She is too hungry.

Sam says her name when he's close, and there is a disconnected part of Ruby wondering that he can still sound so broken saying her name. How strange that her name can still sound like a plea on his lips instead of poison.

"Don't you dare come before I do," she hisses, and that does the trick.  He flips her over, face down on the bed, holds her down with his hand between her shoulder blades the way she likes, and he slams into her, and slams into her, harder and harder, faster until her orgasm shudders through her and she gives him permission: "Yes."

Sam doubles over and comes, cursing as he buries his face in her hair.

-

"I should kill you right now," Sam says.

As far as pillow talk goes, this is not in the top ten. They lie on their sides, facing each other but not touching each other, as if after what they just did, this last-minute demilitarized zone might be a saving grace.

Ruby scoffs. "I'm a demon. I'm already dead."

"I mean oblivion."

"You can go ahead and try."

He raises his eyebrows. "Just like that?"

"I've done what I needed to do." Ruby smiles. "Or have you forgotten, Sam? I saved the world."

His expression darkens. He turns away from her and tries to sit up, but when she grabs his wrist, he stills. Learned helplessness. Muscle memory. The various frailties of the human heart, she suspects.

"You can help save it too," Ruby says. "Say yes to him, Sam."

"Never." He tries to pull away but she tightens her grip.

"You know you will eventually."

Sam wrenches away, stumbles to the bathroom without a look back.

"Sam-"

He slams the bathroom door.

-

The autumn air is biting, and Ruby lets it chill her as she steps out into the parking lot. _I saved the world_ , she said to him, and she mulls it over now, having never articulated it in quite those terms. It is a grand thing. It should be a grand thing. She still thinks of it as the moment Lilith died instead of the moment Lucifer rose. She supposes such sentimentality will fade in time. It is a new world after all.

"What were you doing?"

Meg's voice startles her. Ruby whirls around, and there she is, Azazel's favored daughter and Lucifer's most loyal disciple, watching her impassively.

"I," Ruby says, "came to convince Sam Winchester to say yes. To join our cause."

She waits to see if Meg believes it, and then realizes that it's not technically a lie. Maybe Meg realizes this too.

Meg arches an eyebrow. "Did it work?"

"Not yet."

To Ruby's surprise, Meg holds out her hands, asking for hers. Ruby complies. Her host's hands are small, and Meg covers them easily with her own cold touch.

"I'm not sentimental," Meg says. "When we thought we lost you last year, I accepted it. With war comes sacrifice. None know this better than the daughters of hell. The only thing that mattered was the next step of the plan."

Meg's gaze is unnerving. She is the type to smile at her adversaries, cooing at them and calling them names, showing her teeth as she cuts them apart. But she lets her solemnity arise when she is with comrades. Whatever is at the center of Meg is forged from steel and she carries it with ease, exuding an air of concise threat. She is one of the few demons who can walk on consecrated ground, and she fears nothing, mourns no one, or so they say.

Meg rubs the inside of Ruby's wrist with her thumb. "It's still true now: the only thing that matters is the next step of the plan. Do you agree?"

Lilith used to hold her hands like this. She would kiss them and say Ruby has done so well, that she's been so good, and she would be rewarded at the end of the road. She would shine.

"Yes," Ruby says. "I agree."

"Good." Meg lets her go. "Lucifer is waiting. Let's move."

So they move.


End file.
